The "Gold Standard" for attaching walls to the foundation in this type of situation is by the combined use of strapping and pins.
First the pins.
Drive treated (rust proofed) rebar pins down into your stemwall and foundation and leave enough exposed above the foundation that will get embedded inside the wall as you build. These pins are not there to provide tensile strength. They are not there to hold the wall down. The pins are there to avoid having the wall shift sideways. These sideways forces are common in earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, and other such extreme conditions. These pins help keep the walls from sliding off the foundation during such extreme events.
Note: Make sure that your stemwall extends high enough that your papercrete walls cannot get wet if you ever have a plumbing leak and flood the interior floors.
To hold the walls DOWN, the best solution is to use strapping.
For a rammed earth tire foundation, I suggest strongly attaching strapping to the tires themselves, or even better, looped around and under the tires before they get rammed. The strapping should be long enough to extend above the finished wall, including the upper bond beam. Just coil up the strapping once it is attached or looped under the tires. Leave it there out of the way, one end of the strapping on the interior side of the wall, and the other end on the exterior, and don't let it get buried and lost. Strapping every couple of feet is typical. Plus strapping at each side of every window/door opening.
Once your walls are completed, put a bond beam on top of the wall to stiffen everything, and provide strong attachment points for roof rafters/trusses/vigas.
Then simply uncoil each length of strapping and loop it up over the wall and over the bond beam and attach it there strongly. Best if you can actually tension the strapping in place in a uniform manner.
This assures that the whole wall, and the upper bond beam are firmly attached all the way down to the foundation. Once the roof structure is placed on the bond beam, it will take some ungodly winds to lift the roof structure up and off the building.
The strapping will get hidden by burying it underneath exterior stucco/plaster/clapbords/shingles, or whatever exterior finish you choose.
Interior strapping also gets buried underneath plaster, or other interior wall finishes.
This rough process is commonly used in strawbale construction.
Also, there are other possibilities and other methods of attaching walls to foundations. This just happens to be the method I believe is the best, not that other methods are necessarily bad or wrong.
I hope these suggestions are helpful.
And... please post photos of your project. Even just your foundation if that's all you have right now. I'm sure everyone would be happy to see them.
--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, <grantslayton@gmail.com> wrote:
Rusty
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